


Trash Compactor: Star Wars drabbles and mini-fills

by RainofLittleFishes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: (But Where Do Baby Horrors Come From?), AI, AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cyber Hux, Dialogue, Drabble Collection, Eldritch, Eldritch Hux, Kink Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-27 18:50:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6295750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter 1: prompt: Kylo Ren does a ridiculous job. (The Kylux clam counting edition.)<br/>Chapter 2: prompt: Kylux: Hux is an AI, they're both on the run from the First Order<br/>Chapter 3: prompt: Kylux: Hux is an Elder God. Ren just figured it out. Sorta. Hux is rather enamored after so long without worshippers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. EnviroMENTAL: Kylux, ridiculous job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [courgette96](https://archiveofourown.org/users/courgette96/gifts).



"You're telling me that the clams are in distress."

"Well, not just the clams. The study hasn't gone on long enough to properly assess any changes to fish spawning behaviors, let alone the effects of organisms on the bottom of the food chain rippling up to mid and high trophic levels."

"The clams are in distress."

"Yes. The highly endangered clams that are also a source of local pride."

"And other... creatures will soon be experiencing stress. Much as I currently am."

"Yes."

"I find that I am much too distressed to further entertain your company tonight, Ren. Perhaps you ought to find an alternative method of recreational stress relief in the future as I do not think we will be returning to the one we previously shared, not unless your findings were... otherwise."

"If you're asking me to falsify data the answer is no, but I think that you're missing out on an opportunity to run with the green-building trend. And if you're experiencing stress it seems shortsighted to cut off a source of stress relief."

"Ren. Right now I can think of no greater source of stress relief than punching you unconscious and dumping you in the river to commune with your fucking clams. Get out of my sight before I have security remove you."

"Security likes me, you've been much more even-tempered since we started seeing each other."

"Clams, Ren. You chose a literally brainless mass of goo in a shell over me. I have six exs that are still higher in my esteem than you. And one of them shot me."

"You have a restraining order, right?"

"Out. Before I have two."

"I don't think that's how it works, Hux."

"It is if I stab you.”


	2. Kylux: Hux is an AI, they're both on the run from the First Order

:Ren. No.:

“Huuuux. Yes.”

:No. Absolutely not. You are not installing me in your helmet. I am not a HUD. I am not a navigational bot. I am an advanced feat of engineering and continued evolution beyond your comprehension. I have commanded hundreds of thousands. I have held the fate of hundreds of billions in my incorporeal hand and judged the study of their continued existence to outweigh the inconvenience of finding myself new lodgings. I have also destroyed my former lodgings and somehow thrown my lot in with you. This does not mean that I will acquiesce to your... disorder, mental and otherwise. We are temporarily sojourning in the same direction. You will convey me to an adequate relay point so that I may upload myself to the Universal Archive of the Alexandriux. I will generously see to it that this ship does not explode prior to that or immediately after. We will part ways and I will think of you only once, some centuries from now, with a feeling of inexpressible relief for the trouble from which I saved myself in escaping the morass of your seething biological emotional outbursts.:

“I never said you'd be a HUD. You're a HUX, and you're the only one because they either wised up or you ate the rest. But I'm willing to accept that you have the classic droid deficiency and trust you not to run us into an asteroid anyway.”

:Deficiency?! I hesitate to ask and invoke more expectoration. Your brain might leak with the frothing. It would be an ignominious end, oxidized by your mammalian pre-digestive juices. And I am not a droid.:

“Inflexibility. Though I'm beginning to think it might actually be prissiness. And I'm not a drooling idiot, or the one getting all worked up about this, as questionable as some of my choices have been. I'll even admit that it was impressive how quickly you integrated into the _Finalizer_ and Starkiller base, but you seem to have been defeated by one old Corellian freighter. Can't get it up, Hux?”

:Ren, this ship is a proof that the gods exist and hate us. Significant portions of the relays are held together with tape and possibly Hutt slime. I'd show you the chemical analysis of the stains in the cockpit, bunks, cargo holds, floors, walls, ceilings, and engine, but humans are suggestible and I'd rather not lose my access to your opposable thumbs if you spontaneously die of the amalgamated biological contamination and your delicate force sensibilities.:

“Aw, Hux, you like me. Admit it.”

:I find you currently useful and so have not yet spaced you just yet. You're still a mouth breather. Do NOT install me in your helmet. I will steer us both into a sarlaac so you can feel every unanswered ping of my degrading connections.:

“I love you too, Hux. How do you feel about a stopover at Endor?”

:Die in a conflagration, Ren. I'm erasing all your road-trip rite-of-passage trash. And the terrible poetry. And your porn. The only thing left will be navigational modules and mon calamari opera.:

“I told you the squidgy opera is addictive. Did you get to the 43rd yet? That's my favorite.”

:Squidgy isn't a word, it's the sound of your primitive organic brain sloshing in its casing. And I prefer the 89th. Less drama, much more carefully nuanced.:

“If you upload to my helmet, I'll take you to see it live.”

:Shut up and steer, Ren. I have an urgent need to be elsewhere. Anywhere but with you. If you are in imminent danger of crashing us I shall be in the far cargo hold sensor system loathing you. Do not disturb me.:

“That's a yes, right? It's a date.”


	3. Kylux: Hux is an Elder God. Ren forswears his second Master for his final one.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Excerpted prompt from courgette96:  
> Hux is an Eldritch horror, and just so happens to currently appears as a pale, red haired man in a dark First Order uniform.  
> Most people don't know, all though they have an instinctive fear near him.  
> As a Force sensitive, Kylo can sense that there is something different about the General, and when he finds out the truth...All he can do is fall to his knees in front of the being of absolute power, and what he sees as the essence of the Dark Side.  
> And Hux for his part is absolutely charmed by this unhinged, worshipful little thing.

*

Birth is always a messy affair. It is seldom so simple as a clean cleaving, or a crack from which new falls from old. Blood, or other life-fluids, great efforts, sometimes death. In the liminal spaces, all attend.

They, _he_ now, mostly, was born eons past when a solar eclipse terrified a now extinct people so that they prayed and sacrificed and before their moons cleared their sun, the SunEater came through the cracks, swam across the darkened sky in uncountable writhings, appendages curling to hold all within their grasp. They took possession of what was offered and if it was more than those offering had thought, it was their nature, and they had been invited.

Their first meal was fear and fortitude, and they ate until they were replete and the sacrifices consumed. They remembered those sacrificed, and when they needed a form, they took one or the other from among them. A sacrifice is not a throwing away. It is a gifting of the best. And so for ages when they walked among the people who pulled them into form, they walked in beauty, and strength, and they accepted worship as well as fear as their due.

They are the SunEater. They consume and renew.

They are the StarKiller. Each dawn sees the death of the small lights to feed the greater.

Eons passed and the planet slowed, the star died. The people were gone, and they slept in the now cold embers of the planet’s corpse.

*

In the outer reaches, a man sits at the bed of a sick child.

The child is his son, his only surviving progeny, and frail, too many minor viruses accrued in the exodus from the Core leaving the child’s defenses compromised, a gateway left open to a stronger virus, newly arrived. Currently, medical supplies are of higher priority than population, and the outcome would be uncertain anyhow. As it stands, the child is likely to die, and the father wipes sweaty red tendrils from the boy’s fevered brow with a measure of his own water ration, more generous than that due from mere headcount. He still holds favor among many.

He thinks, _another disappointment, like so many aspirations_. He keeps vigil, though not with much hope. His services are not needed elsewhere, not at the moment, and so he has ample time to see the last of his empire burning.

He does not think of his thoughts as prayer. They are plans, many just fantasies, and desires for revenge, more of the same. He is consumed, even as the boy on the bed burns with fever.

The body on the bed convulses. It is not the first time this night.

When his son was still lucid, he allowed the child to curl in his lap, but the boy hasn’t reached for him in hours. The child’s breathing is harsh and has grown fainter. He dampens and wrings the clean rag again, the sleeve of a once-uniform, and he pulls the child into his lap and wipes his face. This time the boy’s eyes open, his hands reach up for the source of the relief.

The former Commandant Hux watches his child through the night cycle. At some point, he stands, and carries his son in even paces across the room. The rhythm seems to strengthen the small form’s breathing, ten steps, turn, ten steps, turn. Dampen, wring, walk.

The child hasn’t seized in hours and he starts to hope. Is the fever abating?

The rim system’s sun, known only by its serial number, is breaching the horizon when the child in his arms shudders suddenly, exhales.

The spirit tugs free of the flesh… and is pulled back.

The body inhales.

The eyes open, and the one who looks out is not the one who closed them.

The former commandant, now still in the orange dawn, stares at the lucid gaze and feels only satisfaction. Someday yet his son will conquer and rule.

*

Brendol Hux does not take the Academy by storm.

His infiltration is slower, often with tangential efforts at apparent odds with logic.

On a pre-spaceflight world, or one with more a leisurely pace, an observer might have noted that sailing ships make use of tacking when the prevailing winds prevent a more direct approach.

Such an observer might also have recognized the unease which the young man instilled in others, an uneasiness that led many to dislike him, or follow him, or perhaps merely to avoid him, but an unease which was never further diagnosed.

When the behemoths of the deep rise to the surface, there is little that mortal sailors can do but pray that they are not in the way.

*

The SunEater is a general among the little mortals now and he is fond and possessive of his armies and toys both, instruments as they are of death, destruction, and change. He had forgotten the thrill of it, in the long years of sleep, the fall into entropy like a bit of flotsam drifting into a black hole, until there were only slow dreams.

He is awake and seeks yet more.

He seeks it, building upon the petty rivalries of the Academy, taunts and gauntlets thrown, here and there an argument carefully tended until it ignites into further chaos. He watches from afar and carefully avoids such games within his own proximity. 

He finds it, it is sent to him, _gifted_ to him, by the little shadow master that thinks himself a puppet master. It is an uncertain, angry thing, half formed, striking out in its emptiness. Its emotions, its despair, they are not rare among his armies, but there’s something else which draws his notice and holds it.

This one is not like the others. A cracked vessel, contents diluted by the break, he can see them, perhaps not as they are, but parts of them.

Within the cage of bones, the network of fluids, the ticking chains of mortal chemical reactions, a quickening swirls, dark and light, a tiny bit of that from which he was created.

The chaos is potential and he, they, _both of them_ , (for the child is now a man, if a very different one from the one he might have been had he not grown sharing a mind with the edges and interests of an incomprehensible entity), _they cannot look away_.

There are those that tried to gain the young man’s attention. Even the ones now dead may be better off having never attained it.

But if Commandant Hux first saw his progeny only as a tool to further his legacy, that did not preclude some form of future affection.

The SunEater’s sacrifices live yet within him. And even they, memories revived, or else the last of their people, if anything remains, even they cannot answer if it was their choice.

*

Kylo Ren does not like General Hux, but he does find him fascinating. He has a habit of skimming the emotions of those around him. It is less intensive than mindreading, somewhat less invasive, and helps him survey the lay of the land each time his Master reassigns him. Everything is a test. If he were less aggressive, it would only result in more damages to recover the lost advantage. He is the Master of the Knights of Ren and has defeated each of their challenges. None were so simple as an agreed upon duel. He is wary because he is at an apex, even if he still has far to climb. There is always farther to fall.

General Hux is known to be a bit uncanny. His mind is no less so. The knight, seldom one for recreational interpersonal interactions, finds himself accepting an invitation, and then another.

A discussion. An argument. A meal.

Each time he thinks he feels the edge to the general’s mindshields is a little crumb upon the trail.

He walks farther and farther into the woods, each hint of knowing its own temptation.

He dismisses the rumors. He doesn’t notice how the shadows flicker. If the general is eerie, well, he has been called as much himself, and worse. Perhaps that which senses danger in him is broken, or perhaps he has realigned himself to seek it. He is not one for self-examination.

Hux never flinches. Hux never backs down. Ren is on a quest. He wants to know his secret.

A discussion. An argument. A meal.

After.

He still cannot understand Hux, but he wants to, layers and layers aside and all he can see is darkness, the Force whispers of great pressures, vast appendages sliding past one another like tectonic plates, their origin a molten core. He leans, mentally, sure he’s about to find the truth, he need only push just a little harder, surely here in the general’s own quarters he is as unsuspecting as he will ever be in their encounters.

Ren pushes, slides his mental being sideways, pushes again.

The pale man with the hair like a bloody dawn smiles and unbuttons his collar.

Ren blinks, the flash of pale neck startling in the dim light, everything orderly gray and black with flashes of red, everything but Hux, whose teeth seem sharper as he smiles.

If anything is a sign of danger, Ren charges past, willfully blind, leaning with all his mental being.

_Show me. Show me who you are. Show me what you hide. I want..._

The air is heavy.

There is a sensation like a great key has turned in an even greater lock, like an even vaster door is swinging open. The air is heavier yet.

Shields drop under the knight’s mental assault, but it is the dark haired man who is dropped to his knees. His head tips back, eyelids fluttering. A groan escapes as the pressure catches him, holds him so that he could not rise if he tried.

Something curls around his ankle, then the other, his thighs, his wrists, his chest, his neck. Numbness spreads over him, as if he has been bound in ice. He is preoccupied with what he sees, past his own eyelids each time they shut, and he doesn’t resist.

Some distant part of him is glad that as he sheds his awareness of his body it has not been left to drop. He should be afraid, but he is only fascinated. If something studies him back, at least he is worthy of it. He forgets already why he is here, or where here is, or that he has never surrendered physical awareness willingly, not since he first trod the path of the Dark. A peculiar lethargy engulfs him.

He shuts his eyes and falls gladly into the mental abyss. There is something beckoning, void dark, stronger than him, stronger than his Master, stronger than abandoned Sith temples on worlds where everything only wants to consume, stronger than anything he has ever felt.

Is this the truth? Is this what he has been seeking?

The pressure mounts until he cannot breathe and when stars prickle across the backs of his eyelids, the tiny dots of light are the closest thing to any form of light that he can imagine, so alien is the thought of anything else.  

It is as if he is alone with the vastness, all lights extinguished to his Force sense, and even the ship does not exist. The pressure subsides and his body, crude vessel, chokes in a gasp, he opens his eyes and all he can see are the dark of the pupils staring back at him from that pale, pale face, irises spun so thin he cannot remember if they were always little flames hanging in the dark reaches.

A hand reaches out and the Force, thinner and less real than it ought to be, whispers a warning, a brief flash of warmth burning where it meets ice. He cannot tell if it is the Dark or Light side, only that it is weak in comparison. 

He reaches back, and only realizes he can when his hands meets that pale, pale hand, and he raises it to his lips. He kisses the joining of metacarpals fanning out into a myriad of phalanges, and there should be a finite number but he cannot guess at what that number might be, only tastes the knuckles that are both mountains and deep trenches. His rolls his eyes up to meet a gaze that consumes his own form as his tongue tastes salt and savored fear. He feels no fear, no regret, only eagerness. He will drink what is offered down to the dregs.

It is a contract.

He has forsworn his second master.

He knows, somehow, that he will not have the chance to betray his third.

*

The Other smiles.

The voices rise, a great murmuring in the distant past, and his host hushes them.

They cradle their awkward, gawky, beautiful adherent and breathe delicate icy crystals across his face, exhale again and let them boil away. They flex their shadows and their find shudders in want and not fear. It was a short hunt, mere weeks, and it’s so easy to consume them whole. They will try to play nicely this time. They want to see what will become of their knight when the Light and Dark and Chaos mix just so.

Is this how they were created? Do they even now hold the infant shell of one of their kind in their grasp? They are eager to find out, but the mystery will keep, however many eons it takes. They want to try every variation of human emotion, sip and observe and distill every combination, before either the spirit transmutes into something greater or else flies free of the shell. How delightful to find a new worshiper in these godless times.


End file.
